Quote:
Originally Posted by Maverick
I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for your input here. You're all right about the counseling and me needing to be patient with my partner. Like I said in a previous post, I was seeing a gender therapist for about 4 months last summer and I stopped seeing her because of exactly the reasons you all mentioned. She made ME feel like she wasn't empathetic to my partner's struggles and I felt like she was pushing me in directions to transition before I was ready to go there. Obviously, it was a bad fit for me. I will be finding a new therapist very soon who is more willing to listen to me and isn't so rigid in their beliefs. I think from everyone's posts that is the place to start at this point. Thanks again.
Mav
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Yes, I think it is really important that a therapist stay conscious as to where their client is in moving towards medical transition. Additionally, I think that it is important that therapists at least make comment on the fact that some folks do not medically transition and that this does not make them any less than the gender they already are. Moreover, I think that we should present the idea that the gender binary is not the only way to look at things and that some believe there is more than two genders. I have met a number of folks who felt like they had to transition b/c they knew they were not their birth sex, so they MUST be the opposite sex. They appreciated the idea of thinking outside the box.
Anyway, I am preaching to the choir on this site, but Maverick's post got me thinking about what concerns me about some gender therapists (the gender binary concept). I will say I believe this way of thinking is less common than in the past in the gender therapist community.